The Best Dad in the Universe
by PenguinofProse
Summary: Inspired by the mug Bellamy brings down to Earth at the start of S5. A somewhat AU retelling of S5, focusing on Madi's search for the perfect foster father.


She knew he was the best dad in the universe long before she saw the mug. In fact, she thinks, she has always known it – or rather, she has known it for as long as she has known Clarke, and that is basically always.

She knew it from the softening on Clarke's voice as she spoke of him, the way she almost cradled the pencil as she picked out the creases of his smiling face, the way her heart glowed in her eyes when she asked for stories of him. She knew it, too, from the content of those stories. He had raised his sister with love and patience and misplaced optimism. He had made a rabble of scared teenagers feel safe and stable and whole. And he had not been afraid to look after Clarke, even though she was a strong independent woman with a people to lead.

So she knows, as she emerges from the trees, that he will not be afraid to go and look after her now. Nothing compares to the relief she feels upon seeing him here, now, in the flesh, at just the moment when she needed the best dad in the universe the most. She wastes a precious second on reflecting that Clarke will be beyond happy to see him, and that they will be able to get on with being a real family, before she kicks herself into action.

"Bellamy? Clarke knew you would come!" Her emotions are getting the better of her, in a swirly, chaotic mixture of fear and excitement and anxiety and hope. There is a beat of silence, in which Bellamy looks somewhat like the bottom has just fallen out of his world.

"Clarke's alive?" She expected to hear wonder in his voice, and is slightly saddened that she hears mostly confusion.

"She's in trouble." He seems a bit slower on the uptake than she was expecting. Maybe it's the shock, she decides, and he'll be back to his heroic self momentarily. "We have to go!" He doesn't seem to have understood that gun-wielding strangers are cause for a fair amount of urgency.

"What about the others in the bunker?" It is Monty who speaks next, whilst Bellamy seems still to be adjusting his ideas.

"Still there." They need to get on with this rescue mission, not stand around catching up like this.

"What?" Of course, Bellamy wants news of his sister, but this is really _not_ the time. "No, no, how can that be?" She's losing patience with this now. He needs to get on with being the best dad in the universe, and rescuing the best mum in the universe. So far all he's actually done is stand around while she shoots the bad guys.

"I'll explain on the way." She grabs his hand and runs in the direction of the rover, trusting that the others have enough sense to follow.

…...

The run to the rover is not a long one, but the story she has to tell is not exactly complicated, and the snatches between their panicked breaths are perfectly able to do it justice.

"Clarke's alive? How?" Bellamy seems more prone to repeating himself than she was expecting.

"Nightblood." Hopefully he's intelligent enough to make sense of that.

"Oh." In that one syllable, and the ensuing silence, she can practically _hear_ him recalculating everything he thinks he's known for the last six years. Recalculating the number of unnecessary deaths in Praimfaiya, recalculating the months he presumably spent mourning her. Paces pass before he moves on to his next question.

"The bunker? Why are they still there?"

"The tower collapsed. Too much debris. We couldn't dig them out. We tried." They reach the rover and she opens the driver's side door. "Get in." Bellamy takes the passenger seat and the others jump in the back. "What's the plan?" She asks, because presumably Bellamy is supposed to be the one who has the plan.

"Take me to Clarke, then get the rover and yourself and the others out of there." He pulls the mug out and she reads the words and knows that with the best dad in the universe here to save the day everything is going to turn out just fine. "I got this."

"What are you going to do?" She can't help asking, because even if she has every confidence in him, this is Clarke's life they're bargaining with.

"We have leverage. Raven's holding almost three hundred of their people hostage." His tone is flat, almost emotionless, as if saving people in such high-stakes situations is basically just a normal day in his life. Based on some of the stories she's heard, it basically is. "I'd say that freeing Clarke to save that many people is a deal they're likely to take."

"I'm so glad you came." Just for a moment, she allows herself to be a child, because she knows she can, with Bellamy here to save the day.

"So am I."

She drives in silence for a while, avoiding trees in the darkness, until Bellamy's voice interrupts her.

"I should probably have asked this sooner, but who on Earth are you?" It never occurred to her that, at some point, he would have to ask that. In her daydreams he had just swept down here in his rocket and swept Clarke into his arms and understood, instinctively, that they were family. He hadn't _needed_ to ask who she was, because he had _known_.

"I'm Madi." She supposes she ought to be more informative, but she is somewhat preoccupied with nursing her irrational hurt at having to answer the question at all.

"And I'm guessing you worked out who we are because you know Clarke?" At least he seems to be recovering from his shock and employing his common sense a little more productively.

"Yes. She adopted me, I guess. I guess you won't be surprised to know that she talks about you quite a lot. Draws you too." She sees a faint smile grow on his face at that, and she just knows that they are going to be perfectly and absurdly happy once they get Clarke. The village is appearing through the trees now, and she can see a body lying on the ground, shaking. "Is that Clarke?" She knows the answer long before the words leave her mouth.

"It's OK, Madi. We'll get her." She's not sure how he manages to sound so calm, and is beyond relieved that he is by her side. At the sight of her mother lying on the floor in pain, she loses all respect for the plan in her desperate desire to save her. She turns to open the door, but Bellamy's gentle voice stops her.

"Hey, no. Take the rover back. That's the plan." She turns to him, disbelief all over her face, because surely he is not expecting her to actually follow the plan when Clarke is lying there in agony. "I won't let anything happen to Clarke. I promise." She gives a slight nod at that, reassured, and lets him get on with the plan.

"Come out with your hands high." A fierce-looking woman who is decidedly _not_ one of the good guys is barking the order at them. Bellamy does so, slowly, eyes fixed on Clarke, and Madi sees the moment that Clarke realises it is him and everything is going to be OK. It's an odd thought, because her mother is lying in a heap on the ground surrounded by threatening strangers, but she doesn't think she has ever seen her look happy in quite that particular way in all the years she has known her.

"I'm unarmed." Bellamy says, but she knows that is completely untrue, because he is armed with a best dad in the universe mug, and in such competent hands as Bellamy's, that is surely a dangerous weapon. "I just want to talk."

"Talk?" The fierce woman does not seem to like the idea. "Give me one good reason not to kill you where you stand."

"How about I give you 283?" The need to stay and watch events unfold, to know that they are both OK, is almost overwhelming, but she forces herself to follow the plan and drive the rover back into the woods. After all, if there's anyone she can trust with Clarke's life, it's this man that she's known for five minutes but also for five years.

…...

She knows that going back for the mug is stupid, but she can't help herself.

When the bad guys clear out to follow Bellamy's plan, she takes Echo and does a quick sweep of her home, grabbing a handful of their personal belongings: a couple of Clarke's drawings, their med kit, Jasper's goggles. Echo's a bit of a legend, it turns out. Clarke hadn't known her well, hadn't had that many stories of her, but she's pretty badass and funny and just the person Madi wants as backup as she raids the village where she grew up which is now in enemy hands.

They're about to leave, scurrying back through the shadows towards the rover and their way out of there, when she makes the impulse decision to turn back for the mug. Somehow, somewhere, she knows that she's going to need it again one day.

…...

She might have to revise her earlier opinion of Echo, she comes to think over the next couple of hours, because people keep putting her and Bellamy in the same sentence and that can't be quite right. There's something about the way that Monty says specifically to _her_ that he's sure Bellamy will be OK that makes her childish fingers tremble slightly where they grip the mug as if her life depends on it. Because in the story she'd been expecting, Echo has no particular right to be any more worried about Bellamy than anyone else. It's supposed to be _Clarke_ who worries about Bellamy, as in fact she has for the last six years. And Bellamy is supposed to look after both of them. And that is how their family is supposed to work.

This seems a shame, because Echo really is pretty cool. She's not quite sure what to do about this, because her loyalty to her mother and desire to stick to the script seems to be in sharp contrast to her instinctive desire to be _liked _by this formidable woman who has walked into their lives. She wonders if maybe this is a thing that _adults_ do, having complicated and conflicted feelings like this, and resolves to practise the art carefully. Surely, it is possible to like Echo even if her presence seems likely to make their family reunion more complicated?

She is challenged in her resolution to like Echo in the moment when she realises that her worst fears were true. Because, as she runs towards Clarke in that desert, she can see her mother staring with utter horror at something over her shoulder and she just knows it has to be some kind of upsettingly _kissy_ reunion between the best dad in the universe and the most confusing stepmother on Earth. She steals a peek behind her and, sure enough, Bellamy is not keeping to the fairy tale _at all_, and for a moment she wonders what would happen if she shouted this at him, or if she threw the mug at his head. But then she remembers that there are crises to face and complicated feelings to practise having, so she simply hugs Clarke and takes some deep breaths to push down the tears of disillusionment that threaten to spill over.

…...

She's beyond puzzled when Clarke takes her aside in Polis and says something very odd indeed.

"If anything happens to me, you find my mum, OK? You find Abby." There's a desperation in her tone which indicates that she genuinely means it, and this is the weirdest thing of all. Because surely she's supposed to find Bellamy? Surely that was the moral of all those bedtime stories, that in any crisis, Bellamy is the person to find? Besides which, in her experience of fairy tales, fathers tend to be more use in the middle of a war than grandmothers. But her mother really does seem serious about this, and she _thinks_ that maybe she's not so far away from crying, and that is the moment when she starts to realise that something is very wrong, and that the beautiful future and happy family she has dreamed of for as long as she can remember is not likely to come to pass any time soon.

It only gets worse, as she sees Bellamy and Echo saying an uncomfortably touching farewell outside their tent and she has to take deep breaths and remember her resolution that Echo is _cool_, even if she's dating the wrong man. And then it gets worse still, as Clarke marches over to them, and she can just see from the set of her shoulders and the furrow in Bellamy's forehead that they're having a disagreement about something, and she suspects it's her, because she knows her mother is being an overprotective fool and insisting that they should run away before Octavia finds out she's a nightblood. And she doesn't really understand _why_ they're running away, because in every story she's ever heard Clarke _does not_ back down from anything, and Bellamy always has the back of those he loves, and she can't help but be confused as to how the pair of them have lost faith to such an extent that this is no longer the case.

And she _certainly_ doesn't think that their running away is worth the two of them arguing over, because frankly they already have enough things getting in between them without her being added to the list. She hates it, standing here, watching the best parents in the universe waste time and energy in being so utterly dysfunctional.

And with that thought, she knows what she has to do. After all, Octavia is basically her aunt. Surely, she will be safe with her.

…...

Octavia is certainly saying all the right things, about unity and about protecting her, and she seems to be every bit the legend that Clarke has painted her as. She is definitely living up to her reputation as Skyripa, with the dramatic war paint and the chilling voice. All the same, though, she doesn't look much like she chases butterflies any more, and Madi can't help but feel that her voice is really a bit too chilling for what should, surely, be quite a happy occasion. It seems odd to sound so _dramatic_ when welcoming her to Wonkru, and she wonders if perhaps there is something going on here that she hasn't entirely understood. Perhaps Octavia is experiencing some _complicated _feelings of her own. Maybe they could bond over this, she hopes. She'd like something to bond with this formidable young woman over.

And then Clarke shows up, and she doesn't really seem to understand, because she appears to be angry and to be set on ruining everything with her criticism and that way she has of always thinking she knows best. It's frustrating, because Clarke is her mother and she is, in fact, the best mum in the universe, but recently she seems set on being rather silly, between arguing with Bellamy and now looking at Octavia like she wants to gut her.

She wishes, so very much, that this could all be over and they could get on with being a normal, functional, family.

…...

She likes Bellamy, but she wonders if she likes him with more _determination_ than should really be necessary in order to like the best dad in the universe.

He's not really as _warm_ as she'd expected, from all the times Clarke went on about how he was so big-hearted. In fact, if she didn't know better, she might think that he was keeping her more distant from him than would really be a normal way to treat one's foster daughter. She's disappointed, too, that he hasn't told her any bedtime stories yet, because from what Clarke has said that's something he's quite good at. And he used to tell Octavia bedtime stories, years ago, on the Ark, so it seems only reasonable that he should tell them to her, too. He doesn't hang out with them the next evening, and she wonders if maybe he has just forgotten, but when she asks Clarke if she thinks that Bellamy will be stopping by to tell her a bedtime story about Odysseus and about Penelope who waited all those years for him to come home, she just sniffles a little and says that it's time for bed and maybe there will be a story tomorrow. But she's not such a child any more, it seems, because she realises that, when she looks behind those words, no father will be there to tell her a bedtime story any time soon.

So that's the reason, really, that it is so easy to agree with his plan when he shows up and shares it with her. Because this is exactly what she has wanted all along – Bellamy, saving Clarke from a crisis, with her by his side to help. Just like the awesome family they were meant to be. And as he presents his idea, that she should take the flame and between them they could save the day – and her mother – her hand wanders to the deep pocket of her coat and settles on the mug that she has kept there, all along, even when she doubted him and thought that maybe he wasn't going to turn out to be so _dad_-like after all. Because this is what they are meant to do, surely. It has to be.

…...

Clarke doesn't see it like that, it turns out. No sooner have they made a start with their plan than it goes horribly wrong and quickly comes to a resolute _end_. And then Bellamy is Octavia's prisoner and Clarke is driving away. Worse than that, _she_ seems to be Clarke's prisoner, and that's so outside the realms of possibility that she just can't fathom it. She allows herself to cry a little, even if she is the commander now, because this is not _at all_ how this is supposed to go. Clarke is not supposed to abandon Bellamy, even if his parenting skills do need a little more polishing, and she is certainly not supposed to ruin their family even further by holding her own _daughter_ prisoner. She's not sure how to fix this, even with the wisdom of the commanders roaring in her skull, because Clarke is not acting like Clarke and that's something that not even Lexa knows how to fix. And over all this, fear is swirling in the pit of her stomach, because Bellamy is out there, somewhere, surrounded by so many people hostile to him for so many reasons, not even armed with a mug this time, and yet her mother just does not seem to care.

She is beyond relieved when Clarke realises that she's been an absolute idiot, but that quickly turns to fear when she understands that means that they will have to split up again. Taking a steadying breath, she reaches into her pocket and her fingers close, shaking, around the mug. She can do this. She has to, for their family.

…...

There are lots of things she still doesn't understand, for all that she has the wisdom of the commanders within her. In part, she suspects, this is because Clarke is still sheltering her as much as she possibly can.

She does not understand, for example, _how_ the peace treaty was made. All she knows is that Clarke went onto that ship to save them all, and when she came back, Eden was to be shared, and no one would talk about it.

She suspects, from the whispers she hears around the village, that this is a peace treaty born from death. From what they say, these members of Wonkru who watch her mother walk by and hiss the word _Wanheda_ at her retreating back, it would not be the first time Clarke had resorted to desperate measures. But she doesn't offer her daughter – who happens to be the commander – any further information about the means by which she reached her end, and so the valley is shared, and everyone is at least doing a good _impression_ of peace. And, she hopes, if they give the impression of peace for long enough, the day will come when they no longer have to pretend.

She does not understand, either, why it is becoming easier to like Echo. For all that she is now a walking encyclopedia of battle strategy, she has little knowledge of matters of the heart, so all she sees is that Bellamy and Echo seem to kiss less, and then not at all, and then one day Echo invites her out for an archery lesson and she jumps at the chance because this woman is _awesome_ and she's always wanted to be able to shoot a leaf from a hundred paces.

She does not understand what causes the change in Bellamy, but he smiles more now, and brings cool things to show her that he has found whilst out hunting, like a fossilised shell which is absolutely perfect and just the sort of thing the best dad in the universe should bring back from a trip. He stops by their tent, now, in the evenings, and sits and talks with her mother about everything and nothing, and when the day comes when she gathers the courage to ask him for a bedtime story his smile threatens to split his face in half.

"Of course, Madi. I never thought of it, I'm sorry. I guess I thought that the commander was too old for bedtime stories." He seems genuinely happy to be asked, and she's pleased she was able to pay him back just a little for the happiness he has brought into their lives.

"I'll never be too old for bedtime stories." She reassures him, because if she plays her cards right here she senses she could get enough bedtime stories to make up for all the years he missed.

"Then I'll have to keep telling them, often and always." He reassures her, as he crosses his legs and turns his full attention to her.

He asks if there's anything particular she would like, and she says Odysseus and Penelope please, because she understands that one has quite a nice ending where he comes home to his family and they live happily ever after. And he says yes, of course, and tries to smile, but she thinks that maybe he's finding it a bit _complicated_ because his eyes are definitely distinctly wet. But then he begins the story, and she curls up next to her mother, and they listen together.

…...

She still has the mug, but she hasn't needed to hold on to it for a while now. She is growing into her role as commander, and besides which, one or other of her foster parents' hands are always there now in the rare moments where she does need something to hold on to. And, failing that, there is her aunt Octavia and her kind-of-awesome-stepmother Echo, and her sober but still a bit confusing grandmother if things get really desperate.

So as she sits on the council, and listens to those people and a few others suggest to her that she should decree there will be a Unity Day celebration to mark a year since the peace treaty, she knows what she has to do. She finds some scrap paper on which Clarke once practised drawing some leaves, and she wraps the mug gently, and on the paper she writes _Bellamy_ in careful letters.

And then, when Unity Day comes round and people start to eat and drink and celebrate, she goes to look for him. There he is, as he usually is these days, sitting by the fire that has become _theirs_ as a family. And she holds the gift out to him, suddenly feeling somewhat shy, because she's never really given anyone a gift before.

He opens it, and he doesn't smile or grin or laugh like she expected. Instead, he starts crying, and there are really rather a lot of tears, and they're pouring down his face like the meltwater that roars down from the mountains in spring, and for a horrible moment she fears that maybe she has done something very wrong.

But almost before that fear has finished forming in her chest, he is on his feet, and he is wrapping his arms around her, and she understands that, actually, they will live happily ever after, as a family, with him as the best dad in the universe, just as she had always known he would be.

**a/n Thanks for reading!**


End file.
